


if you'd grant my love a pardon

by belatrix



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Guilt, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 19:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20981216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: The first time, it goes something like this:“No,” Tony says, but it’s tired, half-hearted, not quite a denial.





	if you'd grant my love a pardon

There are days when he almost forgets about the whole ‘eighteen’ thing.

And there are days when Peter scatters schoolbooks across Tony’s granite countertops and chews on the edge of his pen and talks about the new friends he’s made at his dorm and wears those Hello Kitty pajamas and panics about booking his flight tickets to Massachusetts in time―

And Tony thinks, _oh_.

The first time, it goes something like this:

“No,” Tony says, but it’s tired, half-hearted, not quite a denial.

In the dim light Peter’s eyes are dark and big, too big, eyelashes fluttering and wet. It makes something twist in Tony’s chest, something searing hot and aching like a stab wound, like shrapnel.

(And that’s the catch, isn’t it. His heart can’t fucking take it when the kid cries.)

“_Why_ not,” Peter presses, with all the shaky determination of a teenager in love.

He takes a step forward and Tony takes one back, an animal instinct, a last-ditch attempt at preserving some level of propriety. It’s a little after the fact for that now, and Tony would be laughing at himself if he didn’t felt like falling to his knees on the floor, or something equally melodramatic, and he’s very certain this is the exact point in time where he’ll start going grey from the sheer stress of it all.

“Peter,” he says, “you need to leave,” and he meant it to be a stern, decisive thing, but it just sounds empty, unconvincing even to his own ears. With great effort, he does not think about the fact that maybe, just maybe, there’s a dark, traitorous part of him that doesn’t truly want to warn Peter against this.

He shifts further away, still, too afraid of Peter’s gravity; too sure he won’t be able to let the kid go, if he does end up letting himself be pulled in. Peter doesn’t understand that, because Peter’s a child and it’s not his responsibility to stay away, and Tony―

Tony should have known this was going to happen. Or, more accurately, he should have stopped trying so desperately to pretend it wasn’t going to happen, and done an actual something to stop it from happening.

“What I _need_,” Peter says, and it’s that voice again, the one that makes him sound like he’s a thousand years old instead of the teenager Tony was supposed to be taking care of, the voice of someone who’s seen too much, been through far too fucking much, “is _you_. I’m not a stupid kid, this isn’t just some crush. Don’t― don’t tell me what you think I _need_.”

_It’s not right_, Tony wants to say, but he has said it already, and it doesn’t mean anything anymore. He’s pretty sure he’s spent far too much time trying not to let his eyes fall to Peter’s mouth for it to matter.

There’s a single second, silent and stolen like a skipped heartbeat, and then Peter’s reaching out, and then Peter’s kissing him, lips hot and chapped and perfect and everything Tony hadn’t let himself imagine.

Tony’s brain doesn’t shut down, never really shuts up, but it’s the kind of moment when he’s too numb, too scattered, too unable to think of anything that isn’t the curve of Peter’s neck, the rise of his cheekbones, the warmth of his skin.

And so he kisses Peter back, and for now it doesn’t feel like falling, it doesn’t feel like something he’ll have to take back, and he thinks, distractedly, _that_’s the wrongness of it summed up in one act.

The fifth time, a night that’s dark and hurried and oh-so-secret among so many other nights like it:

“Don’t stop,” Peter’s saying, high and trembling, a plaintive whimper, “don’t stop, _Mr. Stark_,” and Tony’s breath leaving him in a shuddering exhale, hot and wet against Peter’s skin.

He tucks his face into the smooth cut of Peter’s throat, closes his eyes, tries to ignore how that tight, panicked coil of guilt in his chest seems to be loosening with every second that passes, replaced by a now-familiar surge of lust, a roiling, reckless wave of pleasure.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter pants, and Tony’s hips twitch, sloppy. _First name basis, kid_, he almost says, doesn’t. He doesn’t quite trust himself with words, not now, not when Peter’s nails are digging into his back like _that_. “God, please, sir―”

The growl that tears from Tony’s throat is muffled by Peter’s shoulder, an animal sound he can’t stop.

There’s that little voice again, locked tight and tied up in the back of his mind, the disapproving, disappointed one, rattling against its cage; Peter shouldn’t be calling him that, not in bed, and Tony―

Tony definitely, absolutely shouldn’t like it as much as he won’t admit he does.

Well. There are a lot of things Tony shouldn’t like, shouldn’t want, shouldn’t do, shouldn’t, _shouldn’t_.

But he’s here, isn’t he? He always seems to end up _here_, one way or another, all roads leading to Rome and all that, something along those lines. His metaphors tend to be more eloquent when his head is not a simmering cocktail of panic and want.

He’s here, losing track of time, babbling nonsensical endearments and praise to the tune of Peter’s spiking heartbeat. The world’s a blur of echoing little moans in his ear, strong hands gripping his back, thighs wrapping like a death trap around his hips, and when Peter comes with a violent shudder and cry Tony feels it like a punch to the gut, holds him through it and tries not to follow right after, fails.

Peter always makes this soft, startled gasp when Tony comes inside him, always tightens his grip on him like he’s afraid Tony might disappear like a magician’s trick when it’s over.

Tony considers it. Every time it’s right there, trapped behind his teeth when he looks up at the ceiling and tries to catch his breath and Peter snuggles close, his arm warm and tender across Tony’s heaving chest, _can’t happen again, kid, we should stop, this was the last time_.

The thing is, those words never make it out. They stay stuck and pointless in his throat as Peter clings and keeps clinging (and if it were anyone else Tony would probably make a joke about him looking like a disheveled barnacle, but it’s Peter, so he won’t) with too little space between them for air to pass through and the contented hum of Peter’s pulse the only thing Tony can hear.

And those other words, the ones Tony can never quite stop thinking about, the ones always waiting tucked away between his ribs, _I love you, I love you, I don’t know what the fuck I’d do without you, I’ll go crazy if you go away_― those ones, they never do make their way out, either.

The eighth time it’s him in the kid’s old bedroom in Queens and an unwashed MIT hoodie at his feet and an old Iron Man poster on the wall, bright and glossy and gleaming like an accusation.

Peter’s down on his knees in front of Tony and it feels like he has been there for such a long, long time, it feels like he’s been there since they met, and Tony’s truly sorry, he _is_. One of these days he’ll tell Peter to get up from there and walk away, but for now he’s too selfish for that, too stuck to move, pinned to this silent, breathless moment by those eyes that are looking up at him like he’s something worth looking at, and he can’t think clearly enough because there’s a pale, eager hand reaching for his belt and a small grin tucked in the corner of Peter’s mouth and―

And.

He strokes Peter’s hair through it, as gently as he can manage, isn’t entirely sure if it’s meant to soothe the kid or himself. He keeps quiet and doesn’t close his eyes and doesn’t come in Peter’s mouth, because that seems important.

Peter smiles a sunny smile up at him, after, drops a small kiss to the slant of Tony’s hipbone, and doesn’t catch the way Tony’s heart misses a beat ―but then again, he has his super-hearing, so maybe he does.

Some mornings, they resemble normal people with normal lives who are in normal love.

Peter is always alight with excitement when he visits from college, smiling those happy smiles Tony can never manage to get out of his head, bouncing around Tony’s penthouse and kissing him on the cheek and organizing movie nights and burning breakfast in the kitchen like he belongs, while Tony watches with a smile of his own that he can’t hide and pretends he hasn’t been sulking and drinking while Peter’s been away.

The illusion breaks, still, too often: Happy walking in, a call from Rhodey, lies piled on top of lies (“yeah, Aunt May, don’t worry, I’m spending the night at Ned’s, I’ll text you, love you_”_) and that’s when Tony snaps out of it, remembers what the hell he’s doing, _wonders_ what the hell he’s doing, and there’s the snide, backwater part of his mind sneering at him, _well, here we go again_.

But then Peter says something and they end up laughing together, really laughing, everything else forgotten, and maybe some day they might actually approach some semblance of normal, or something close to the neighborhood of normalcy, maybe Tony can actually begin to believe that.

The (insert-number-here, this is the part where he’s lost count) time, Tony has another string of apologies sitting heavy under his tongue and his fingers tangled in Peter’s hair, pulling just a little too hard.

Peter’s on his hands and knees, skin glowing too soft and too beautiful in the moonlight spilling through the blinds, and Tony wants to turn them over so he can see his face.

He wonders, briefly, how and when on earth Tony Stark ended up being _this_ guy: the one who teeters on the edge of a mild panic attack every time he fucks Peter from behind, because it feels too wrong, too impersonal, too much like he’s just using the kid’s body, too much like those high, keening sounds spilling from Peter’s mouth are pain rather than pleasure.

His mind is racing crazed and hazy along those lines and yet his hand is still on Peter’s hip, as if glued there, pressing pink marks into Peter’s skin that will fade before an hour has passed. They always fade, disappear like they were never there. Tony leaves bruises and bites and scratches, but they’re all gone in the morning, always, and sometimes Tony wishes they didn’t go away, sometimes he wants them to stay painted all over Peter’s body so that he’ll have to look at what he’s done.

Peter whines, pushes back against Tony’s steady thrusts, Egyptian cotton sheets crumpling in his fists. “Harder,” he breathes, “Mr. Stark, _harder_,” and Tony shouldn’t, but he does.

He pushes in deeper, his grip on Peter’s hair tightening, and Peter cries out something high and incoherent, a sound that’ll be etched into Tony’s mind forever. He watches the slow slide of a drop of sweat trickling between Peter’s shoulder blades as he starts fucking into him harder, faster, his own orgasm already starting to build and his heart kicking wild and anxious in his chest.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter moans, the words evaporating into the pillows as he loses his grip and falls down on his stomach with the force of Tony’s thrusts, Tony falling with him, muffling a growl in Peter’s hair, feeling the kid’s body shake all over under his.

His hand slips on the sheets until it finds Peter’s, and Tony winds their fingers together, presses frantic, open-mouthed kisses on the sweaty, trembling lines of Peter’s back.

“Baby,” he breathes, “baby, it’s so good, you’re so good, you’re going to make me come―”

―and what he really means is, like it always is, _it’s so good_, _I’m sorry, I love you, you’re going to make me come, I’m so fucking sorry_.

He watches the kid put on his shoes with both hands. Scuffed sneakers, the same ones he’s had since high school. _Christ_.

“Don’t do that,” Peter says.

Tony swallows, lets his head fall back against the headboard. He wants a drink. He wants a cigarette. He wants to pull Peter back into his arms and kiss his mouth, his nose, his eyelids, tell him it’s going to be alright, because apparently his brain stops functioning properly after they’ve had sex. Or before they have sex. Or any time Peter’s in the general vicinity of Tony’s person, if Tony wants to be painfully honest with himself, which he doesn’t, not really.

“There’s a very long list of ‘don’t do that’s’ I’ve been spectacularly failing to adhere to, lately,” he says. “Which one in particular are we talking about right now?”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you regret it.”

_I don’t_, Tony ought to say. It’d make the hurt in Peter’s eyes go away, probably. There’s a sudden lump in his throat, acidic and terrible, and for the first time in over a year, Tony has the horrible suspicion that he’s going to cry.

He really does need that drink.

Instead, he sits up on the bed and watches Peter watching the sheet slide down his hips. He still hasn’t bothered to get dressed.

“Come here,” he says, whisper-soft, spreading an arm for Peter to crawl under. Peter does, and Tony presses a kiss on the top of his head, doesn’t say anything about him getting on the bed with his shoes still on.

There are days when he almost forgets about the whole ‘eighteen’ thing.

And days when he really, truly doesn’t.

Because it’s _eighteen_. As in, only very barely legal, and still not remotely okay. And somewhere down the line, Peter will stop being eighteen, nineteen, twenty. At some point, he’s going to grow up and realize Tony isn’t the only man in the world who can look at him like this, make him feel like this, fuck him like this, he’s going to grow up and walk away and probably need a healthy serving of therapy on the side for all the issues Tony will have inevitably caused him, he’s going to grow up and figure out there’s a whole life out there waiting for him that does not revolve around Tony _fucking_ Stark―

He’s going to grow up and Tony’s still going to be the guy spending half his day thinking about Peter’s wide eyes, the mess of his hair, the lilt in his laugh, the way he looked before he turned to dust in Tony’s arms and the way he looks when Tony’s inside him.

But for now, there’s this― Peter’s kisses and Peter’s smiles and Peter’s fingers linked with his, Peter saying _I love you_ in that hushed, excited tone, mumbling the words into Tony’s mouth, and one of these days, Tony’s going to forget himself and say them back.

One of these days.


End file.
